The effect of corporate strategy and IT role on the intent for IT outsourcing decision

Abstract

The Intent for IT outsourcing is commonly categorized as IS Improvement, Business Impact, and Commercial Exploitation. The decision factors for these IT outsourcing include corporate strategy types, IT role, and interaction between these two. Firm size and IT maturity are selected as moderating factors to add the credibility to the research of the effect of IT outsourcing decision making. Analyzing collected data revealed that corporate strategy rather than IT role is more significant factor affecting the intent for IT outsourcing decision. Defenders tend to use IT outsourcing more as a means to improve information systems, compared to analyzers and reactors. Prospectors tend to use IT outsourcing more as a commercial exploitation, compared to analyzers and reactors. Unlike previous researches, the hypothesis that IT role determines outsourcing intent was rejected. It was also rejected that the interaction between corporate strategy types and IT role determines outsourcing intent. ? 2011 Springer-Verlag.